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No 'smack-down' allowed at playtimes
The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 11/24/2006 12:28 PM
Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung
Schools in Bandung are banning students from playing ""smack-down"" wrestling following the death of a 9-year-old boy, whose father says he died after the game was played at a prayer meeting.
At Babakan Surabaya elementary schools No. 4, 7 and 14 in East Bandung teachers prohibited students from playing the ""smack down"" game and displayed newspaper reports about the death of Reza Ikhsan Fadillah.
Reza died of a fever a month after being beaten by students in a game held during a recess at a prayer meeting. The elder children were reportedly copying wrestling techniques shown on TV.
Police have not yet confirmed his death was linked to the imitation of the WWE Smackdown competition shown nightly on Lativi.
Soemadinata, the headmaster of SD Babakan Surabaya No. 4, said the ban was taken after one of the school's students was injured in boisterous play.
""Meanwhile, a fifth grader at SD Babakan Surabaya 7 had to have his face sewn up after he was wounded during the wrestling game with his friends,"" Soemadinata said Thursday.
The Graha Ananda elementary school in Ngamprah has also imposed a ban.
""It seems this is the best way for the students, who have stubbornly disregarded their teachers' instructions to stop the wrestling game because it is very popular among them,"" Yeti, a teacher at the school, said.
She said miming the ""smack-down"" techniques, which combined kicking, punching and throwing, were popular among boys and girls.
A psychiatrist at Bandung's Hasan Sadikin Hospital, Teddy Hidayat, said childhood and adolescence were ages when children like to imitate.
""As the 'smack-down' wrestling TV show stars huge and brave men, the children want to become heroes like the wrestlers. They tend to repeat the (wrestling moves) over and over because it gives them a kind of self-esteem,"" Teddy said.
Children should not be blamed for imitating the television program, he said. It is up to their parents, teachers, the government and broadcasters to ensure the environment they grow up in is a healthy one, he said.
""The management at the television station should have been informed in advance about the likely impact of its (wrestling) show before airing it. Who said children go to sleep at 10 p.m.? They tend to continue watching the favorite shows they like most, certainly if parents do not prevent them from doing so,"" Teddy said.
He urged LATV to stop airing the show as part of its responsibility to help educate the next generation.
Teddy said the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission should also clamp down on all stations that aired shows containing excessive acts of sex, violence and crime.
The commission tended to take action only after questionable material was aired and not monitor the shows to nip bad television in the bud, Teddy said.
